Trump rips into Putin for ‘bull****’ as Ukraine peace talks unravel despite dictator’s ‘nice’ front
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President Donald Trump ripped into Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, accusing him of ‘bull****’ in negotiations to end war with Ukraine.
‘We get a lot of bull**** thrown at us by Putin, for you want to know the truth,’ Trump told reporters during his Cabinet meeting. ‘He’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.’
Trump also complained it’s been ‘tougher’ than he anticipated to bring about a ceasefire in the three-year war.
‘It’s turned out to be tougher, but it’s only tougher. And I will say the Ukrainians were brave, but we gave them the best equipment ever made,’ he said.
Trump’s rhetoric on Putin has gotten increasingly harsher and his patience has gotten shorter as he struggles to bring an end to the war. The U.S. president has pushed for the two sides to sit down for peace talks but Putin, last week, flat out rejected Trump’s plea for a ceasefire.
The president also increased his backing of Ukraine, sending more weapons to Kyiv, just days after ordering a pause in the shipments.
President Donald Trump is showing his impatience with Vladimir Putin
President Trump spoke with separately with Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last week.
Putin told Trump that Moscow will not give up on its goal of eliminating the ‘root causes’ of the war in Ukraine, according to the Kremlin.
That is code for the Kremlin’s argument that it was compelled to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in order to prevent the country from joining NATO and being used by the Western alliance as a launchpad to attack Russia – arguments rejected by Kyiv.
Trump, for his part, urged Putin to end the war but the Russian leader refused, according to the Wall Street Journal.
After the conversation, Trump said he had made ‘no progress’ with Putin on moving towards a ceasefire, adding that he was ‘not happy’ about the war in Ukraine.
‘I’m disappointed, frankly, that President Putin hasn’t stopped,’ Trump said Monday night.
Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected President Trump’s plea for a ceasefire in Ukraine
A team of deminers from the HALO Trust (a British charity and American non-profit organization dedicated to the removal of landmines and unexploded ordnance) clear explosive ordnance on the outskirts of the village of Budy, which was left behind during Russia-Ukraine war in early 2022 in Kharkiv, Ukraine
Meanwhile, the president told Zelensky, in their private conversation, that he wants to help Ukraine with air defense because of the escalating Russian attacks, Axios reported.
On Monday, Trump re-upped sending U.S. weapons to Ukraine, sending 10 Patriot interceptors — anti-missile systems — to Kyiv as Russia launched its largest missile and drone attacks of the more than three-year war.
‘We’re going to have to send more weapons — defensive weapons primarily,’ Trump said Monday.
‘They’re getting hit very, very hard,’ he said of Ukraine.
